It’s been a wild ride, and I’m honestly so happy with how things have gone. You guys are amazing. Despite my author friends advising me otherwise, I read every single comment and try to take note of all feedback for when things cool down and I can go back and edit things.
We were supposed to move to a twice-a-week release schedule now, but since Hoqalo is still on RS (thank you so much!), I’ve decided to keep releasing every weekday starting Monday (so no weekends, if we stay on RS that long).
Writing 10 chapters a week (7 Hoqalo + 3 Rimelion) >_< turned out to be… a bit too much. Eight chapters is still hard, but manageable with some breathing room over the weekends.
If you want to support the release schedule and keep me on RS, please help out however you can: commenting, following, rating, or even just viewing the chapters. Everything helps more than you know.
Going forward, I’m thinking of 3 chapters a week as the “normal” schedule, since I’ve learned that I can more or less keep up with that. I’ll keep you informed if I can sustain 6 chapters a week (3 per story).
I started writing this story because I loved Outrun, Cyber dreams and similar stories, and I wanted to make my own contribution. Write something I would personally love to read. A story with more hope, and with people living more “normal”-ish lives.
Also, the vote about leaving the book at home in Chapter 34 was an overwhelming NO (80%). The book is coming with us into the arcades.
Thank you again for being here with me. ??
“Don’t ask for an invite.
Show your work. Build something real.
When you’re ready, someone will notice.”
— Tinkerer DB FAQ (unofficial, widely cited)
The doors closed behind us, cutting off the rain and the grey street, and I got my first proper look at Neon Vault’s interior.
It wasn’t what I expected.
The entrance hall stretched out like a hotel lobby, not the budget kind where you worried about carpet stains, but the kind where CEOs closed deals over cocktails.
Plush carpet in deep pink, thick enough that my wet boots sank slightly with each step. Walls paneled in what looked like real wood, not synth-composite, with brass fixtures that gleamed under warm lighting.
But the aesthetic was wrong for luxury.
Vintage arcade posters lined the walls in expensive frames; their colors were too vibrant, too perfect. A reproduction of an ancient fighting game character, fist raised, pixels rendered with museum-quality printing. Next to it, a poster for “GALACTIC INVADERS” in that blocky retro font, the kind that screamed 1980s Earth 1.0 despite being manufactured last year.
The carpet had geometric patterns that mimicked old arcade flooring. The lights were styled like neon tubes but made clean light without any of the flicker or hum of actual neon.
Retro aesthetics with none of the grime, none of the wear, none of the reality that made actual old arcades what they were. Rich people playing at being poor, I realized. The same way Alice and Cecilia “slummed it” on Floor 72.
Alice bounded toward the reception desk with her usual energy, silver hair still somehow dry from her constant heat aura.
The bodyguards had melted into the background somewhere, probably waiting outside or stationed at strategic points they’d already scouted. I stood there, taking it all in, my wet hoodie dripping slightly onto the expensive carpet, but thanks to the weird soul-bound properties it was almost dry already.
“Wait,” I said. “I expected...”
Cecilia gave me a rare small smile, standing close. “First time at AR arcades?”
“AR?” I blinked. “How does that work? Do they have emitters like—”
“Dash!” Alice called from the reception desk, holding up three cards. She tossed one at me, and I caught it reflexively.
The card looked like old paper, yellowed and rough-textured, like something from a museum exhibit. But when I touched it, the texture was wrong. Expensive stock printed to look cheap and aged.
Even the entry cards were fake-authentic.
“So games?” Alice grinned, practically vibrating with anticipation. “What’s first?”
Cecilia considered for a moment, her expression thoughtful. “Fate Duels?”
Alice’s face immediately shifted to friendly annoyance. “You only wanna play because you’re the MC and have two swords!”
Cecilia’s pout was devastating. Small, subtle, but somehow conveying maximum irritation. “But it’s fun!”
“Yeah, but we’re starting with Operation Jungle Storm!” Alice declared, grinning widely. “It’s got one to three MCs!”
Cecilia’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, but the fire mage is the main main character.”
Alice shrugged, completely unapologetic, and turned to me. “What weapon do you wanna use?”
I hesitated, glancing between them. “I’m, uh... not really good at games. Like, any games. I spent most of my school years learning how to solder things together, not... playing games, with one rare exception, Paladin Online. That was more like—”
Alice’s grin somehow got wider. “Preem! That means you won’t know all the meta strats and cheese builds! You’ll actually play it like it’s supposed to be played!”
“That’s not—”
“Come on!” She grabbed my arm again, already pulling me toward a hallway that branched off from the lobby. “The AR rooms are this way! You’re gonna love it! Well, probably. Maybe. Okay, you might hate it, but you’ll experience it, and that’s what counts!”
Cecilia fell into step beside us, and amusement flickered in her expression as her sister dragged me deeper into Neon Vault’s polished, curated approximation of arcade culture.
The clerk at the reception desk examined our entry cards. His fingers ran across a scanner; the vintage-style paper cards looking absurdly out of place against the sleek modern tech, and within seconds two additional clerks materialized from somewhere behind the desk.
“Welcome to Neon Vault,” one of them began, her smile professionally warm. “If you’d like, we can provide a guided tour of our premium facilities, including our—”
“Nope!” Alice cut her off with cheerful finality, already grabbing my arm. “We know where we’re going! Thanks though!”
She pulled me toward a hallway branching off from the main lobby before either clerk could object, Cecilia following with that quiet grace as if she’d been through this before. The hallway was shorter than I expected, opening almost immediately into a wider corridor lined with doors, each one marked with glowing numbers.
AR ROOM #1 was closest, its sign rendered in that same fake-vintage aesthetic as everything else in this place, neon tubes that were actually LED strips programmed to flicker just enough to look authentic without being annoying.
I glanced further down the hall and spotted AR ROOM #2, identical in every way and having its name flicking to AR ROOM #1 after ours turned to red and the room name faded into “IN USE”.
Corpo doesn’t like being second, huh?
Alice released my arm at the threshold, and I got my first look at the setup.
Three doors, arranged side by side with symbols projected above each one in soft blue light: MALE on the left, FEMALE on the right, and between them, a stylized AR icon that probably meant something to people who understood modern design language.
“Changing rooms?” I asked, though it was pretty obvious.
“Yas!” Alice practically bounced on her heels, already moving toward the female door with Cecilia. “Get suited up! Don’t take forever!”
The female clerk from earlier followed them inside, leaving me standing there with the male clerk, who smiled with the patient professionalism of someone who dealt with confused first-timers all day.
“This way,” he said, gesturing toward the male door.
I followed him into a space that was significantly less fancy than the lobby. Plain walls, simple lighting, a row of lockers along one side, and benches bolted to the floor. Suits hung from hooks on the wall, matte black fabric with subtle geometric patterns that caught the light. It looked form-fitting in a way that made me immediately uncomfortable.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The clerk gestured toward it. “First time here?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Alright, simple process.” He pointed at the suit. “Strip down, put that on, leave your clothes in the locker. The suit has Thaumatic Feedback Grid nodes and sensor arrays that interface with the AR system.” He tapped a small control panel on the wall. “Once you’re suited up, the game environment can simulate everything from recoil to environmental effects. Temperature changes, impact feedback, even simulated wind resistance.”
I stared at the suit, my brain already trying to figure out how the tech worked. Thaumatic field generators in the walls? Localized force projection? It had to be something sophisticated to create the feedback he was describing without actually hurting people.
“Got it,” I said, reaching for the suit.
Then I stopped, my hand unconsciously moving to touch the book case hidden in my hoodie’s interior pocket. The chromium-tungsten alloy was cool under my fingers, reassuring in its solidity, and the thought of leaving it in a locker made something in my chest tighten uncomfortably.
“Can I...” I hesitated, glancing at the clerk. “Can I keep my clothes on over the suit? I’ve got something I’d rather not leave in a locker.”
He laughed. “Only if you had emitters built into—”
I activated the MIRAGE system as I had practiced before I came, feeling as the micro-cameras engaged and the projectors calculated their refraction patterns. My clothes shimmered once, then disappeared, leaving me standing there in what appeared to be a distortion or a fog in the changing room’s ambient lighting.
The clerk’s laugh died mid-sound.
He stared at me, or rather at where I was standing, his expression shifting from amusement to genuine shock. Then his eyes widened, and something that looked almost like excitement flickered across his face.
“MIRAGE SYSTEM?!” His voice cracked slightly on the last word.
I deactivated it, my clothes reappearing with another shimmer. “You know it? Yeah. Built the integration myself.”
“You—” He stepped closer, his professional demeanor evaporating completely. “Can I see?”
I turned slightly, letting him examine the hoodie’s construction, and watched his expression shift through several stages of technical appreciation as he traced the outlines of the embedded projectors with his eyes, careful not to actually touch.
“Nice emitters,” he muttered, spotting the placement. “And these are... micro-cameras for adaptive coverage?” His gaze snapped up to meet mine. “Is this Midorikawa grade?!”
“Just personal fabrication,” I said, trying to downplay it. “Had access to some decent materials.”
He opened his mouth, probably to ask about specifications or the build process or any of the dozen technical questions I could see forming behind his eyes, then his holoband pinged with what sounded like an urgent notification. He glanced at it, sighed, and the professional mask slipped back into place with visible effort.
“Okay,” he said, clearly forcing himself to focus. “The suit goes underneath your regular clothes. You have housing for the MIRAGE chip?”
I shrugged. “Kinda? I’ve got the universal connector, but I haven’t designed the housing yet.”
He nodded, and I caught something that looked almost like mentorship in his expression. “Download the universal housing from Tinkerer DB. Don’t waste time reinventing existing solutions.”
“Nobody invited me there,” I said. “Haven’t really done anything worthy of an invite.”
The clerk blinked, then laughed. “Just show your hoodie to anyone in the maker community and they’ll send an invite. I’m out of tickets myself, or I’d do it right now.” His holoband pinged again, more insistently this time. “Now change before I get a penalty for a slowdown.”
I grabbed the suit and started stripping, the fabric of my clothes disappearing piece by piece as I pulled them off.
The suit itself was stranger than I’d expected when I finally got a close look at it, the material having a texture somewhere between rubber and silk, covered in tiny raised nodes that must’ve been the haptic feedback points.
Ugh.
It clung when I pulled it on, conforming to my body with the uncomfortable pull of medical equipment, sensor arrays pressing against my skin at key points.
I put my clothes back on over it, the weight of my hoodie and pants feeling oddly reassuring after the skin-tight weirdness of the suit underneath, and the clerk walked around me, checking the fit, making small adjustments.
“I see you built connection points, clever. I’ll put in our level one battery,” he said, clicking something into place on the suit’s collar that I hadn’t noticed before. “Don’t need to drain yours.”
A notification appeared on my band.
[MIRAGE System Disconnected!]
The clerk carefully removed my MIRAGE chip and power cell, placing them in one of the lockers. He locked it, handed me the key, and then his face shifted back into instruction mode.
“Are you a system user?” he asked.
“Yes,” I pulled my Scavantis card, but he barely glanced at it before glancing back into my eyes.
“Rules,” he said, and his tone made it clear these weren’t suggestions. “Do not use your personal skills or plugins. This is a game environment, not a combat test. No magic, no real weapons. The system won’t register them anyway, and trying will just flag you for removal and incur fees for damage.” He paused, making sure I was paying attention. “Use only the provided weapons based on whatever game you select. Got it?”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“Good.” He gestured toward the exit. “Now we go. Good luck in there, and have fun.”
As I stepped through the AR door, I got my first look at the actual game space.
Empty.
Completely. The room was maybe fifteen meters on each side, walls and floor and ceiling all rendered in the same matte white surface that I recognized as projection material.
No pedestals, no weapon racks, no physical props of any kind. Just blank white space with ambient lighting that came from everywhere and nowhere, and a faint hum of active systems running behind the walls.
Alice and Cecilia were already waiting, and I had to look away immediately because the suits were significantly more form-fitting than I’d realized when I was putting mine on. The black material clung to every curve, sensor nodes creating subtle geometric patterns across the fabric.
Alice noticed me looking away and laughed, completely unbothered. “First time, yeah? Don’t worry, you'll get used to the whole full-body-scanner vibe.” She bounced on her heels, the suit’s fabric moving with her. “Okay, okay, let me pull up the game!”
She made a gesture in the air, fingers moving through some kind of interface only she could see through her AR overlay, and the room responded immediately.
The white space flickered once, and suddenly we were somewhere else.
Not physically, obviously, my boots were still on the same floor. But the projection was seamless enough that my peripheral vision was completely convinced we’d been transported into what looked like a military armory.
Weapons lined the walls in organized racks, ammunition crates were stacked in corners, and tactical gear hung from hooks.
The lighting shifted to match, harsh fluorescents that created sharp shadows.
Then, the floor in front of us rippled, and three platforms rose from below with a mechanical hum that I could actually feel through the haptic suit.
White props rested on each platform as they ascended, blank objects that looked like weapons carved from soap or printed in primer plastic. A rifle here, something that might’ve been a shotgun there, smaller objects that could’ve been pistols or grenades. All of them completely colorless, completely textureless, waiting.
The AR system flickered, and suddenly they weren’t blank anymore.
Textures overlaid across the white props with a shimmer of light, transforming them into proper military hardware.
Carbon-fiber stocks, reinforced barrels, holographic sights that glowed faintly. The detail was impressive; each weapon now looked like something you’d actually find in a corporate armory, complete with manufacturer logos and wear patterns that suggested use.
But I could still tell they weren’t real, and that recognition pulled me out of the moment slightly.
The overlay was good, definitely high-end commercial work, but it was maybe three generations behind what Asti had shown me during our call.
I literally couldn’t tell what was real and what was holographic until she’d walked through things. Here, if I focused on the edges, I could see the slight shimmer where the AR met the physical props, could notice the way the lighting didn’t quite interact correctly with the projected surfaces.
Still impressive, but obviously fake if you knew what to look for.
Alice didn’t seem to care about any of that, already marching toward something at the far end of the armory space with a swagger that said she knew exactly what she wanted.
Three figures stood there, purely AR constructs with no physical props beneath them.
They rotated slowly on invisible platforms, each one showing a different character class rendered in that exaggerated video game aesthetic: a soldier in tactical armor, a woman in what looked like mage robes with flames dancing around her hands, and someone in lighter gear with dual blades strapped to their back.
Alice reached the fire mage without hesitation and touched it.
The figure flashed once, brilliant and sudden, and then Alice was wearing it. Not literally; the haptic suit was still there underneath, but the AR overlay had transformed her appearance completely.
Now she stood in flowing crimson robes that moved with simulated wind, her hands wreathed in flames that flickered and danced without generating any actual heat, her entire aesthetic screaming “damage dealer who doesn’t care about collateral.”
Cecilia moved to the dual-blade figure with her usual focused eyes, touched it, and transformed into someone who looked like they’d stepped out of a tactical espionage thriller. Form-fitting armor, twin swords that gleamed with that too-perfect sharpness of rendered steel.
That left me standing there, staring at the soldier figure and the racks of weapons beyond it.
“You can pick any weapon!” Alice called out, her voice somehow more enthusiastic now that she was dressed like a pyromancer. “But no magic!”
Cecilia glanced at me, and even through the AR overlay I could see the slight tilt of her head that meant she was thinking. “Do you want melee? I could show you some basics.”
I shook my head immediately. “I’m really not good with swords. Like, at all. I know I carry one, but that’s mostly for emergencies and looking slightly less incompetent than I actually am.”
Cecilia moved closer, and there was something almost excited in her expression. “I could teach you properly sometime, if you want. But for now...” She gestured at the weapon racks. “Pick a gun. Something that feels comfortable.”
I picked the soldier class and walked toward the racks, examining the options that had materialized from the white props.
Assault rifles in a dozen configurations, shotguns ranging from tactical to absurd, submachine guns that looked like they belonged in close-quarters urban combat. Pistols lined a lower shelf, and further back I spotted something larger.
Sniper rifles.
I stopped in front of one that was significantly bigger than the others, its barrel easily a meter long, the whole thing rendered in matte black with reinforcement struts along the stock. The label floating above it in glowing text read: SNIPER COILGUN RIFLE.
Coilgun, meaning electromagnetic acceleration instead of chemical propellant.
No plasma, no overheating issues, just magnetically accelerated projectiles traveling at a speed that would grin at armor and fly through as if it weren’t even there.
I’d been avoiding coilguns in real life for practical reasons, mainly that ammunition cost more than I would get for a bug. But here, where ammo was infinite and weight was simulated?
Wait… back at home, I could fabricate ammunition now, theoretically, if I got the materials and the designs right. Maybe it was time to try something different, to see how it felt before committing to the expense of actually fabricating one.
“Dash!” Alice’s voice cut through my introspection. “Come on! Pick already! I wanna burn things!”
I reached out and grabbed the coilgun, the white prop beneath the AR overlay solid in my hands.
The haptic feedback kicked in immediately, adding simulated weight that made the weapon feel substantial despite knowing it was mostly just shaped plastic underneath, and the AR flickered once to confirm my selection.
The rifle looked good; I’d give it that.
Professional rendering, proper scope mounted on top, and details that suggested the game developers had actually consulted with people who knew weapons. But if I squinted slightly and closed one eye, I could still see the shimmer at the edges where the projection didn’t quite match reality, could feel the slight disconnect between what my eyes saw and what my hands knew they were holding.
Close enough to pass, though, and hopefully close enough to be fun.
“PREEM!” Alice practically shouted, flames dancing higher around her hands. “Let’s fight them!”
TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Neon Vault
Join me on or
On Patreon you can read 2 months ahead (~200 pages)